FarmDain, a Decision Support System for Dairy Sheep and Goat Production
Malamati Louta,
Panagiotis Karagiannis,
Vasiliki Papanikolopoulou,
Sotiria Vouraki,
Evangelos Tsipis,
Stergios Priskas,
Georgia Koutouzidou,
Alexandros Theodoridis,
Socratis Dimitriou,
Georgios Arsenos
Affiliations
Malamati Louta
Telecommunication Networks and Advanced Services Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Western Macedonia, 50100 Kozani, Greece
Panagiotis Karagiannis
Telecommunication Networks and Advanced Services Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Western Macedonia, 50100 Kozani, Greece
Vasiliki Papanikolopoulou
Laboratory of Animal Husbandry, School of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Aristotle University, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Sotiria Vouraki
Laboratory of Animal Husbandry, School of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Aristotle University, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Evangelos Tsipis
Telecommunication Networks and Advanced Services Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Western Macedonia, 50100 Kozani, Greece
Stergios Priskas
Laboratory of Animal Husbandry, School of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Aristotle University, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Georgia Koutouzidou
Department of Agriculture, School of Agricultural Sciences, University of Western Macedonia, 53100 Florina, Greece
Alexandros Theodoridis
Laboratory of Livestock Production Economics, School of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Aristotle University, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Socratis Dimitriou
Achilleas Socratis P.C., 1st Km. Amyntaio-Florina Rd., 53200 Amyntaio, Greece
Georgios Arsenos
Laboratory of Animal Husbandry, School of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Aristotle University, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Managing a milk zone in the dairy industry is demanding. Data necessary for efficient management are difficult to acquire because they usually must be collected in organized and standardized ways. On the other hand, software practices constantly provide new tools that can go beyond simple record-keeping practices and add value to the data. In this work, FarmDain is a novel web-based application for sheep and goat management. It aims to improve milk production and processing by digitizing the value chain in data acquisition, processing and visualization between dairy production businesses and their milk suppliers. FarmDain uses state-of-the-art software technologies to model the data collection process and provides a straightforward user interface to facilitate data processing and visualization. Using the app in a case study carried out for 12 months in a dairy sheep farm resulted in lower feeding cost per milked ewe by 5.5% when ewes were allocated into high and low milk production groups compared to the scenario of remaining in one single group. Furthermore, based on reports provided by the app, culling and genetic selection decisions were made to improve the overall farm performance. Similar practices were applied in all farms optimizing their productivity, which led to increased profitability for farms and the Dairy Factory.
